Unsustainable Cheney vs. Sustainable Gore

After the American Century

In recent weeks two vice-presidents have been in the headlines. If either of them were a prospective presidential candidate, this would hardly be unusual. But Dick Cheney is too old to be considered realistically as a candidate, and his health is also a question. And Al Gore clearly does not want to run for president again, after passing up the 2008 campaign.

Both men are in the news because they can be taken to represent opposed elements in American politics. Cheney the former oil executive who is a hard-liner on foreign policy stands in stark contrast to Gore, the advocate of green energy who won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Both men have been willing to "put their money where their mouth is," by which I mean they have invested their personal fortunes in the kinds of industries they believe in. Curiously, however, only Gore seems to be in the spotlight this week. He has been criticized for investing in the green technologies that he wants governments to adopt. This is no different than Cheney, who vigorously defended the coal and oil industries while serving as vice-president, except that Gore is not in office. He is a private citizen, and there is no conflict of interest in his case. Gore has never worked as a lobbyist. So the charge that Gore might profit from green energy investments seems idiotic coming from Republicans. Do they have something against business now?

It would be in order, however, for Congress to hold an investigation into Dick Cheney's relationship to Halliburton while he served as Vice President. Cheney retained many personal ties with Halliburton while in office, and that corporation was given multi-billion dollar contracts to rebuild Iraq - often with no competitive bidding - on the grounds that the response had to be rapid and asking for and evaluating bids took too much time.

Then there was Dick Cheney's big gift to Halliburton in the 2005 Energy Bill. A provision was added to that bill, at Cheney's request, which took away from the Environmental Protection Agency the right to regulate some forms of oil drilling. In particular, a process invented by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing was exempted from EPA control. And, yes, hydraulic fracturing can lead to pollution of the water table, as toxic chemicals are involved. For more on this, see the article in the New York Times. This addition to the 2005 Energy Bill is often called the Halliburton Loophole.

This then is the contrast. On the one side, Dick Cheney, a vice-president who used his office to protect and enrich the company where he used to be chief executive. On the other side, Al Gore, a former vice-president who as a private citizen has put his own money into green technologies. Is it really impossible for Republicans to see that Cheney is a reprehensible self-serving pawn of special interests? Apparently so. Is it really impossible for Republicans to see that Gore is an idealist working within the capitalist system, risking his own money on what he believes in? Again, apparently the Republicans really are this inconsistent and blind.

The persistence of such Republican misconceptions helps us to understand why they are able to see "drill baby drill" Sarah Palin as a feasible presidential candidate.

Al Gore's Energy Challenge

After the American Century

"I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources within 10 years."
Al Gore, July 17, 2008

Al Gore has injected some needed seriousness into the political campaign, helping us to move beyond the silly New Yorker cover. He has called on Americans to produce 100% of their electrical energy using alternative energy, in just ten years. Comparing the project to the successful program to land a man on the moon, Gore presents energy not as a problem but an opportunity. If American farmers grow crops for American biofuel plants, and if American factories produce wind mills, solar panels, and other components of an alternative power system, the US economy will prosper, and the nation will cease to be dependent on foreign oil suppliers. Gore has declared that it is technologically feasible, ecologically useful, and politically necessary to move decisively away from fossil fuels.

Gore's proposal is a logical development in his thinking. After presenting the public with the inconvenient truth of global warming and its dire effects, his plan offers a way out of the crisis. By presenting it months before the American presidential election, he puts it on the table as one of the major issues of the campaign, along with Iraq and the economy. Initial reactions from the two candidates suggest that Obama is far more receptive than McCain, even though his sun-rich home state of Arizona would profit from more emphasis on solar power. Obama declared, "I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power, and advanced biofuels." McCain did not reject Gore's plan, but was less supportive, as one might expect. McCain has championed off-shore oil drilling - i.e. increasing the American supply of oil - while Obama has rejected that idea. So, while Gore wants to lift energy policy making out of the morass of partisanship, this is not likely. But fortunately, both McCain and Obama are far more supportive of developing alternative energies than Bush has been.

Realism suggests that ten years will be too short a time horizon for a full conversion. to alternative energies. The shifts from an economy based predominantly on wood to coal, and from coal to natural gas and oil, each took considerably longer than a decade. But the point is not whether Gore's idea is strictly feasible in ten years. Considerable numbers of people are still burning wood, after all. Rather, the point is that a shift to a predominantly new energy regime is highly desirable, the quicker the better. Clearly it cannot be limited to revamping the approach to electricity production, but should extend to motorized transport as well. Hybrid cars have now proved themselves, and there is no reason to permit new cars that get less than 35 miles per gallon, and even those cars should be taxed heavily enough to make automobiles that get more than 40 mpg attractive. Strictly speaking, the US has oil supplies of its own, that it might continue to consume at 30% of the present level without imports. But the environmental impact of more CO2 is so undesirable that Gore is right about making a fundamental shift. The world, and the US in particular, desperately needs a new energy system.

But even the realistic hope that two-thirds of the fossil fuel energy regime could be replaced may be too optimistic. Unfortunately, all energy systems have considerable "technological momentum," the term that Thomas P. Hughes developed to analyze the ways that energy systems perpetuate themselves. Hughes is absolutely not a conspiracy theorist, who thinks that oil companies and lobbyists connive to keep the present system going. Rather, the enormous infrastructure and the ingrained habits of those who use it, has a powerful momentum that finds expression in the physical layout of cities and homes, the location of resources, the training offered by the educational system, the trillions of dollars invested in the present infrastructure, and on and on. There are millions of people whose jobs are largely shaped by the old energy system, and it will be difficult to move swiftly to a new energy regime, even if Gore makes this a major campaign issue, and even if the right legislation is speedily passed in Congress.

All the more reason for Al Gore to push as hard as he can on this vital issue, and all the more reason why the rest of us should be joining him.


Interested in the historical background to this discussion? Consult David E. Nye,
Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (MIT Press, in paperback), or
Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (MIT Press, in paperback).

The Dangers of Clinton's Strategy

After the American Century

Many have noted that Hillary Clinton is pursuing a strategy which is potentially destructive not just to Obama but also to the Democratic Party. But polling figures show that the strategy of all out attack on Obama, often using precisely the same arguments as Republicans, is having a destructive effect on Clinton herself. The Rasmussen daily tracking poll shows that Mrs. Clinton has been behind McCain now for more than one month. According to the same polling organization, Obama has been closer to McCain, and on a few occasions ahead of him, during the same period.

In short, Clinton risks being seen as a surrogate McCain, or a second-rate version of the "real McCain." She can talk about learning to shoot a gun as a young girl, and she can sidle up to the bar and have a beer and a shot of whiskey, but she just is not as believable in that role as McCain himself. She was not a fighter pilot, she only mistakenly claimed to come under fire. An undecided voter in the crucial swing states of Ohio or Pennsylvania or Florida just might prefer the new (if old) face, and go for the Republican anti-Bush.

It gets worse. Suppose Hillary's endless attacks on Obama do eventually win her the nomination. The millions who voted for him are not going to be enthusiastic about her. Not now. She will have quite a struggle to unite the Democrats, and will have to start months after McCain has been at the same game in his party. Polls show that back in Februry most Democrats were excited about both their front-running candidates, but today the divisions are far deeper, with the split getting worse every day.

Now imagine that you are one of the remaining super-delegates, who has to decide. Clinton has managed to take some of the gloss off Obama, who nevertheless still leads McCain in national polls, while she is clearly weaker against him. The process of selecting a candidate is weakening the party, which now risks losing the White House, despite President Bush's extremely low popularity ratings that hover around 30%. If this goes on much longer, is it not possible that a new, no doubt impossible, scenario has a certain appeal, the scenario of an entirely new candidate coming to the rescue? Someone with experience. Someone who once received more than 50% of the national vote. Someone the party might unify around - like Al Gore.

Impossible now. But what if the race remains undecided until the end of summer?

Endorsements and Super Delegates

After the American Century

Perhaps it is appropriate that the US celebrity culture relies so much on endorsements for political candidates. It does not happen much in the Nordic countries, where a singer or actor's political views are seldom thought to be worth extensive coverage. I have never seen in Scandinavia anything like the "Yes We Can" video made by star supporters of Barack Obama. One might see it as a new genre, the political speech remade into a collective song. I saw it almost as soon as it appeared, and I was moved by it. However, some Europeans I have shown it to find it both attractive and unsettling. One woman took a strong dislike to it, feeling that such things had no place in a political campaign! I report this as it may interest the growing number of Americans who are reading this blog. With many months ahead in this campaign, one can only expect more inventive forms of endorsement, and even more extensive use of the Internet. 

At the same time, the ultimate result for the Democrats may depend on that more traditional technology, the personal telephone call. The press is saturated with reports of former President Clinton calling undecided super delegates, seeking their public endorsement of Hillary. Obama also has his surrogates on the line. Yet it appears that the super delegates are not easily swayed. Some of the most famous and influential want to hold out and let the popular contest run its course first. Notably, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter all refuse to make an endorsement yet, and seem to be holding others back as well. But each day a few do seem to decide. The New York Times, after consulting with both the Clinton and Obama camps, indicates that more than half of the 796 superdelegates have now made public endorsements. Apparently, something like 350 people remain on the increasingly uncomfortable fence.  

It is difficult to reconcile this spectacle with the idea of democracy. Whatever happened to the ideas of equality and "one person, one vote"? Another problem is that two of every three super delegates is male, and almost half are white males who were elected governor, senator or to the House. The Democratic Party might want to revise its rules (again) before the next presidential campaign. The Republicans seem to be better off without super delegates and letting the winner take all. But a back-of-the-envelope calculation strongly suggests that neither Obama nor Clinton would have much of a lead were the Democrats to give all the delegates to the one "first past the post." Perhaps there is no perfect voting system to help adjudicate between two equally strong candidates – which may make endorsements all the more important.

Gore Receives Nobel Prize

Al Gore received the Nobel Prize yesterday in Oslo. He also won the popular vote in the United States in 2000. And if there were an election today in the rest of the world, who doubts that he would defeat George Bush? The trajectories of these two men, both born in 1946, is fascinating. Bush avoided Vietnam, using family connections to be placed in the National Guard. Even in that safe, domestic role, the evidence suggests he was not quite a full-time soldier. As President, Bush has enjoyed parading himself before the troops as the commander in chief, but future historians will surely see the hypocrisy in his posing. Gore, in contrast, went to Vietnam, out of a sense of duty, but without enthusiasm for the war itself. Like John Kerry, he has direct experience of what it means to serve in a foreign war. 

This is not the place for a full rehearsal of Bush's subsequent career, or to compare it with Gore's. Suffice it to say that after lying to the United Nations and charging into a war with Iraq, there is little chance of George W. Bush ever winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and absolutely no chance that he will be remembered as a man of vision with regards to the environment. Recall that Bush long denied even the existence of global warming. He has represented an old-fashioned view of the relationship between the economy and ecology, one that made him popular with oil companies and the boardrooms of Detroit car companies. By comparison, Gore has proved himself to be a man of vision, articulating the environmental crisis with clarity and compassion. In his speech, he emphasized that "without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. It is time to make peace with the planet." Try to imagine Bush making that statement. Try to imagine anyone believing him if he did.

It is an inconvenient truth for the American people, but Al Gore would have made a far better president than George Bush.